Eighty Days
by AndAllThatMishigas
Summary: Having money is sometimes a very strange thing.


**Eighty Days**

Lucien arrived home one afternoon to find his wife sitting at the kitchen table with a strange expression on her face. Her brow was knit as she stared at a page in her hand. Her lips were pressed thin with concentration and concern.

"Jean? Is everything alright?" he asked apprehensively.

She looked up at him with wide eyes, looking almost afraid. "My uncle died."

He immediately came to sit down beside her, putting his hand on his arm comfortingly. "Oh, Jean, I'm so sorry. Were you very close?"

She shook her head, still seeming stunned. "No, not at all. He was my father's brother. Lived in Melbourne. I never really saw him much after my father passed. But apparently Uncle Bill was a widower with no children."

"Oh dear, that is sad."

Jean swallowed hard and held out the letter for Lucien to see. "He's left me everything in his will."

"Really?" Lucien took the letter and read it through. "My god, Jean, you've inherited over ten thousand pounds!" Suddenly her shocked demeanor made sense. He was feeling a little shocked himself.

"According to the letter, I just have to show up at the bank there in Melbourne with my identification and they'll cut the check for me." Jean placed her face in her hands. "Lucien, what on earth are we supposed to do with all that money!?" she moaned.

"Well, first off, it's your money, so you can do whatever you want with it," he pointed out.

"Oh don't be silly. It'll go into our bank account. It's our money. I have no intention of spending it on my own." Her eyes went a little unfocused again. "I suppose we should probably get the roof redone first. Perhaps buy some new appliances for the kitchen. That stove is getting rather old."

"We could expand the patio and garden for you. Make it a real showpiece for all your lovely plants," he suggested.

"I should send some to Christopher and to Jack, wherever he is now. And make sure my sister and Danny get some as well. I can't imagine why I inherited and they didn't."

Lucien pointed out a paragraph of the letter, "No, it says here that your uncle left everything to you because you're a widow and you need the money, see?"

Jean gasped, "But I'm not a widow anymore! I mean, I am, but since we got married, I don't think the same thing applies."

"Well I don't claim to be a lawyer, but I do believe that unless there's a contingency for your remarriage, you'd still stand to inherit everything. And besides, the letter is addressed to Jean Blake, not Jean Beazley, so I think they know we're married," Lucien reasoned.

She turned to him, still looking very concerned, searching for answers and validation in his face. "Lucien, I don't feel comfortable having money like that. I mean, I've never had that much money in all my life, combined! I've lived on a farm or as a housekeeper for my entire adulthood. I'm not someone who should have fancy things befitting someone with money like that."

Lucien took her hands comfortingly and adopted a teasing tone, saying, "I suppose this wouldn't be a good time to tell you what some of the gifts I've gotten you have cost."

She almost rolled her eyes at him. "I do your bookkeeping and pay the bills, Lucien. I know how much money you've got at any given time."

"Well, in the household accounts, yes."

Jean frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"When I first came to live here, I saved money away in a private account that I used for paying my contacts in China when I was searching for Li. Ever since I returned from China, I've been sending her money from time to time and saving up as much as I can for some of the larger expenses," he explained

"Such as?"

"Well, that necklace I gave you for Christmas…"

"The crystal and silver?"

He was suddenly very nervous to tell her the truth. "I'm afraid I may have misled you into believing that. It is diamond and platinum."

"Lucien! I can't be wearing a diamond necklace! I can't even keep that in my jewelry box! That belongs in a vault somewhere! My god, you must have spent a hundred pounds on that, how could you!?"

"I did _not_ spend a hundred pounds on it."

Her eyes narrowed. "How much was it?"

"Isn't there a rule of manners that precludes you from asking me that?" he asked, trying to evade her.

"How much?" she insisted.

"Just over three hundred pounds, actually. And I don't want you to be cross, Jean," he added quickly, trying to cut off her outrage. "I enjoy buying you presents, and I like seeing you get dressed up when we go out and wear beautiful things. It's that necklace that's lucky to be around such an exquisite neck. You're my wife, and I want to shower you with diamonds and gems as often as I can. So there," he finished, rather anticlimactically.

Jean just stared at him with a knitted brow. She wasn't sure how to put her feelings into words. A part of her felt like a queen, being honored with such lavish gifts from a man who loved her enough to spend his savings on jewels for her. But a much bigger part of her knew she was unworthy and unfit for such things. Women like Susan Tyneman wore diamonds worth hundreds of pounds. Women like that got all the finest things and never had to lift a finger. Jean had always been proud of her working-class identity; she enjoyed taking care of the farm and her family and the Blake house and everyone in it. But now being the wife of a doctor, she had a great number of things she still wasn't used to. This was certainly one of them.

At last, she figured out what to say. "I'm in no position to refuse gifts you buy me, but I don't think I'll ever really feel comfortable with things like that. And I do hope you won't lie to me about them. My god, Lucien, how awful would I feel if it got damaged in some way and I tossed it out, thinking it was just a pretty bauble made of glass?"

"You're right. I should have told you. And I will try to keep future gifts at under two hundred pounds, alright?"

She pressed her lips together, trying not to smile. "If you really must."

He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. "That's good. Now then, I know you said it's our money, but I don't want to spend any of it without your say so. And I do have a suggestion for it, which may be feasible, depending on how much of the house you'd like to renovate."

"And your suggestion is?"

"We should take a trip. You said once that you never got to see the world the way you wanted to, and I'd like to take you."

Jean quite liked that idea. "Take me where?"

"Anywhere you'd like. Everywhere, actually. With that amount of money, I bet we could go around the world if you wanted to. In fact, maybe that's what we should do. Follow Jules Verne and go around the world in eighty days."

"Phileas Fogg started in London and we're in Ballarat," Jean noted.

"Alright, we start in Ballarat and go to China and Japan and then across the Pacific to America, take a train from San Francisco to New York, seeing the sights along the way, then we could take a ship to England, travel the continent a bit, then to Northern Africa and the Middle East, on to India, and back home."

Jean had to laugh. He was getting rather excited and very far ahead of himself. "Lucien, we haven't even got the money yet and you're planning a three-month trip!"

"We can get the money tomorrow and visit a travel agent in Melbourne. I'll drive us. And we can have the whole thing planned so we arrive home just before the Christmas holiday."

She patted his hand in appeasement. "Why don't we get the money tomorrow and deposit it in the bank, then come home and we can discuss what to do after that?"

Lucien could tell a brushoff when he got one. "It was just a suggestion. We don't have to go anywhere. As I said, it is your money."

She stood up from the table and placed her hands on his cheeks, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. "You're a very dear, sweet man, and I love you."

After she walked away, Lucien was left in the kitchen, still planning a travel itinerary in his head, regardless of what he'd said to her. Even if they didn't go all around the world, he vowed that he would use his own savings to take her at least to Europe within the next year. He wanted to show her adventure and the wonders outside of their comfortable lives. He wanted to give her the world, if he could.

Jean tried to busy herself in the parlor, but found herself lost in thought. Somehow, beyond reason, she'd married a man who not only wanted to buy her jewels fit for royalty, but he wanted to show her the world. And knowing Lucien, this wasn't just talk. He was prepared to leave the next day if she'd agree. All those years ago, she'd settled into a quiet, regular, ordinary life. It was never what she'd wanted, but it was so rare that anyone got exactly what they'd dreamed of as children. But not with Lucien. He had brought her a life of excitement in sleepy old Ballarat, and he wanted to make all of her dreams come true.

She popped her head back into the kitchen. "I think with air travel, we'd be able to manage in less than eighty days," she commented.

A big grin spread over his face. "Yes, but since we won't be trying to win a wager, we can enjoy things and see the sights. We might want to take our time with the full eighty."

Jean nodded with satisfaction. "Alright, then. Eighty days." She disappeared back into the parlor.

Lucien chuckled to himself. "Eighty days," he repeated softly, now allowing his mind to contemplate all they could do in that amount of time.


End file.
